Summary

This landmark anthology is the first to engage critically the writings of Ayn Rand from feminist perspectives. The interdisciplinary feminist strategies of re-reading Rand range from the lightness of camp to the darkness of de Sade, from postandrogyny to poststructuralism. A highly charged dialogue on Rand's legacy provides the forum for a reexamination of feminism and its relationship to egoism, individualism, and capitalism. Rand's place in contemporary feminism is assessed through comparisons with other twentieth-century feminists, such as de Beauvoir, Wolf, Paglia, Eisler, and Gilligan. What results is as provocative in its implications for Rand's system as it is for feminism.

Author Notes

Mimi Reisel Gladstein is Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, El Paso. She is the author of The Ayn Rand Companion (1984; forthcoming revised edition, 1999) and The Indestructible Woman in Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck (1986).

Chris Matthew Sciabarra is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics at NYU and is the author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (1995) and Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (1995).

Choice Review

Although the editors of this volume--part of the "Re-Reading the Canon" series (which aims to re-evaluate the Western philosophical canon from feminist perspectives)--describe the contributors' credentials as "impressive," none is a professor of philosophy or has a PhD in philosophy and most have little grasp of the nature and scope of Rand's philosophy. Many of the 19 essays reflect the editors' view that the meanings of the terms "objectivism" (the name Rand gave to her philosophy) and "feminism" can be stretched virtually infinitely. Many contributors fail to examine rigorously Rand's own thought, and instead use their interpretations of a very narrow range of her ideas as springboards into discussions of their own versions of "feminism." In addition, some contributors dispense with philosophical analysis and attempt to psychoanalyze Rand's life and ideas. The volume deals almost exclusively with Rand's views on women and whether she was a feminist but does little "rereading" of her metaphysics, epistemology, etc. For example, the editors provide no discussion of Rand's commitment to objectivity and her denunciation of the idea that people view reality through gender (or racial or cultural) "lenses." Not recommended for undergraduate collections. R. Mayhew; Seton Hall University

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